


Duke It Out

by PresquePommes



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Crossdressing, Humor, INDEFINITE HIATUS, Levi Does Not Make An Especially Pretty Woman, M/M, Pseudo-Historical Setting, non-sexualized crossdressing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-10 03:30:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2009256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PresquePommes/pseuds/PresquePommes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren, as the eldest- and only- son of a not-quite-upperclass family, has certain obligations. Among them, the obligation to marry well, and, if all goes according to plan, raise his family's station.</p><p>He wasn't expecting the duchess to be quite so old, though.</p><p>Or so broad-shouldered.</p><p>Or, really, anything she was at all.</p><p>(It was almost a relief to find out she <i>wasn't</i>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [herlovely (acidtowns)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acidtowns/gifts).
  * Inspired by [To Wed And Behead](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/63330) by (herlovely) acidtowns. 



> This is some crazed shit I wrote in the wee hours of the morning last night in a fit of madness.
> 
> As with most crazed shit I write in the wee hours of the morning in a fit of madness, there's a distinct possibility of my continuing this.

She was not exactly what he’d expected.

“Master and Mistress Jaeger, the Duchess Arbinger and her escort, Sir Ian Corrigan.”

She was not at _all_ what he’d expected.

“Thank you for receiving my sister-in-law and I on such short notice,” Sir Ian said with a winning smile. His large stature, carefully trimmed hair and strong, masculine features did not diminish the elegance of his carriage.

Eren considered the possibility that he was the prettier of the two.

The Duchess looked like she might have once been pretty, in her youth. When he let his eyes slide out of focus, she almost was.

She did not, however, look like she’d ever had an overwhelming taste for smiling, and no amount of staring imploringly at the air above her head could change that.

“Mister Jaeger,” Eren heard his mother say to her husband in a hushed tone. Her knew her face was still holding its polite smile. “Why are you selling off our son to an ugly spinster? Did you know about this?”

He couldn’t guess at her age aloud, but inwardly, he suspected it was somewhere between a late twenty-something and an early thirty-something.

He was twenty-two.

And he suspected it was closer to the latter.

“Mistress Jaeger,” Eren’s father said tightly, “the Duchess Arbinger is a powerful woman in the north, and our son could do far worse. He should consider himself lucky to entertain the interest of someone with such close connections to the queen.”

Eren didn’t feel as though she was especially interested in him.

She didn’t look especially interested in anything.

She just looked kind of tired and annoyed.

“ _Rumoured_ to have such close connections to the queen, Grisha,” Carla said through her teeth, and then smiled brilliantly as the Duchess finally finished climbing out of her carriage and came to stand with her escort in front of them. Eren could hear her smiling- her could also hear the tension in her voice. “My lady duchess,” she greeted warmly, and Eren knew she was curtseying, though he’d long since learned not to let his eyes wander during formal meetings. “It is our pleasure to receive you. This is our son, Eren.”

There was a beat of silence, and Eren abruptly realized he’d forgotten what he was supposed to.

“Eren, welcome the duchess,” she said tightly, and he jerked, walking mechanically to stand in front of her and bowing severely at the waist as he did the queen’s salute.

She was shorter than him, mercifully, but he was starting to suspect her shoulders were broader than his.

He hoped it was just the style of her dress.

“It is our pleasure to receive you,” he parroted stiffly, and then stood, still holding his salute as he stared over her head into the coach behind her.

She said nothing.

 _‘I fucked up,’_ he thought, almost relieved, _‘she just got here and I’ve already fucked up.’_

Sir Ian cleared his throat politely and Eren glanced in his direction.

“My sister is withdrawn,” he said with an apologetic smile. “You’ll have to excuse her for her shy and soft-spoken nature- if need be, I’ll undertake the task of speaking up for her.”

At that, the duchess leaned her head towards him and whispered something Eren couldn’t quite catch into his ear.

What he could hear of her voice sounded low for a woman’s- it only made her more imposing. His heart sank.

Sir Ian paused, blinked, and straightened. “My sister says she’s much obliged to you for you hospitality,” he smiled.

If the way her brow wrinkled and her lips thinned was anything to go by, Eren was quite certain that wasn’t what she’d said at all.

***

Her black hair was, admittedly, beautiful, though he was confident at least half of it was fake. He’d seen the tricks his mother’s servants used to make her curls more impressive, and even they couldn’t create such precise and consistent curves.

Her large, heavy-lidded eyes could be soulful if they weren’t so bitterly piercing, he supposed.

Under her decidedly unflattering powder and rouge, her skin seemed like it could be nice, he guessed. She didn’t look diseased.

She was-

Well, she was shorter than him. He could be assured of that.

He was trying very hard to reconcile with his fate, but thus far, his only comfort had come from the discovery that she ate with movements as crisply uncomfortable as he did and seemed altogether quite annoyed with her obligation to take small, becoming bites.

That, at least, he could sympathize with.

***

He’d been willing to take her shyness as a blessing right up until his father made clear in no uncertain terms that he was still obligated to attempt to make conversation with her.

He watched his family entertain Sir Ian in the sitting room after dinner as he sat beside the duchess in miserable silence.

She didn’t look like she wanted to talk.

He’d almost convinced himself that their companionable silence was for the best when he caught his father looking sternly in his direction.

“My father tells me you’re from the north,” he said, for a lack of anything else to say. “Do you enjoy it?”

She looked at him.

"It probably gets very cold there,” he commented inanely, trying not to frown when he realized she seemed to be sweating under the combined weight of her heavy, high-necked dress and the burden of sitting beside the fireside. He could see sweat gathering on her brows. Her composure was admirable. Oddly enough, he found that made him like her more.

She continued to look at him.

“Are you planning to stay in Shiganshina for the summer?” he asked, almost concerned despite the decidedly one-sided conversation he was having. “It gets very hot.”

She looked at him some more, furrowed her thin eyebrows, and looked towards her escort with a concentrated stare.

He saw her begin to fidget impatiently as she waited for him to notice her and wondered about her shyness.

She’d certainly held his stare without faltering.

Her impatience had begun to affect him by the time she caught Sir Ian’s attention- Eren found himself almost at the point of getting up to fetch him, as absurd as fetching someone to speak for someone who was sitting directly beside him and appeared perfectly able to speak seemed.

Sir Ian approached with a pleasant smile, leaning down when the duchess beckoned to him with long, but rather unusually thick-knuckled fingers. She whispered something in his ear, eyes flickering to Eren’s face as she did so, and for a moment, in the firelight, half-shadowed and made almost dainty-looking by her escort’s imposing frame, he almost thought she was pretty.

Sir Ian’s face did a peculiar dance of surprise and ill-restrained amusement.

He took entirely too long choosing his words for someone relaying another’s message.

“My sister says that you have a very charming voice,” he said finally, and then, “and that no, she does not intend to stay for summer, as she is-” He closed his eyes for a moment, nostrils flaring with apparent amusement. “As she finds herself overcome by the heat even now. If you’ll excuse us.”

He watched the duchess as she was escorted from the sitting room and wondered what it was she’d really said.

***

He’d almost begun to enjoy her peculiar company and odd faces of disgust at particularly trite social niceties when it happened.

“Master Jaeger,” one of the house servants said urgently, bursting into the dining room during the soup course, “we’re being attacked by brigands!”

Across the table, Sir Ian tensed, going to stand as Eren’s father dashed to the front room to fetch his rifle and Eren’s mother dashed to the kitchens to hide the silverware.

He paused mid-movement, eyes settling on the space beside Eren with an exasperated look. “What are you doing?”

Eren knew not to look.

Eren knew perfectly well not to look.

Despite all of his training, Eren looked.

Beside him, the duchess was methodically pulling long pins from under her curls. He stared as she calmly removed the entirety of her hair from her head and set it on the table. Underneath, it was still black, but finer-

And considerably shorter.

When she scrubbed the makeup from her face with a handcloth from the table and pulled a small knife from her boot, he started forming an idea of what exactly it was that was going on.

A ridiculous idea.

“Erwin, I haven’t spent the last month with my balls marinating in sweat just so I can wait for a bunch of classless lowlifes to ruin our con before I do it myself,” she said in a very low, very unwomanly voice, and set the edge of her blade to the heavy fabric of her dress with a look of concentration. “Where are my blades?”

“Levi, don’t, that’s-” Sir Ian, or the man the woman who was not a woman had called Erwin, protested, fading into a sigh as the one he’d called Levi sawed the front of his dress open and shrugged it off. “That’s very expensive,” he finished.

The woman who was not a woman and who Eren was almost certain was not a duchess at all, or Levi, who Eren could not help but notice was increasingly naked- and who absolutely did have broader shoulders than he did- just looked at him with sour expression as pried off his uncomfortable-looking shoes. “Where are my blades?” he repeated impatiently, and his companion gestured to the stairs with a weary expression.

“In the hatbox,” he sighed, and then Levi was gone up the stairs on frighteningly quiet and quick feet, leaving nothing but the torn remnants of his dress and immaculately styled wig behind.

Eren stared at them in amazement.

Across the table from him, Erwin poured himself another glass of wine, expression wry.

“Well, it’s as they say,” he told Eren companionably, propping his feet up on the table, “you can turn a guttersnipe into a queen, but not for very long.”

Eren had not heard that particular saying.

He was, however, very interested in anything else Erwin and his nonchalantly half-nude partner may have had to say.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have literally no idea when I decided Eren was going to be such a sassy piece of shit in this work.
> 
> But the brilliant liar thing is totally canon, so I will defend that part to the grave.

Later, he’d consider that he probably should have been more suspicious of how easily Erwin agreed with his demand to be brought along during their escape.

“Stay quiet until I’ve come back- now, is there anything of yours you’d like me to fetch you?” Erwin asked him seriously as he settled into the coach beside the overflow of luggage they hadn’t had time to strap to the roof.

At the moment, he was much too excited to be apprehensive.

“Nothing I can think of,” he grinned, hand automatically going to his pocket to ensure he still had his cellar key. It was something of a comfort object.

 He could hear the carrying sounds of the conflict out by the front of the house, and as the minutes stretched on, his giddiness faded into nauseous uncertainty.

He suddenly felt very tired.

He closed his fingers around the key in his pocket and tried very hard to think seriously about what he was doing.

He knew his parents would be fine- they had fought off brigands before, and Erwin’s strange partner seemed like someone who knew who his way around a weapon.

 _They_ would be fine.

 _‘But will_ I _be?’_

He was asleep before the thought finished percolating.

***

“-another fucking _waste of time_ -”

“It wasn’t a complete waste, Levi- we’ve made it through the checkpoints this far south of the capital, so we shouldn’t be in danger of being discovered by Nile and his boys any longer. And you’ve built up quite a reputation as the duchess- remember, we were able to secure an invitation to the Jaeger family’s estate through correspondence alone-”

“Yeah, and some mark they turned out to be, Erwin- we’re here to rob people, not play dress-up with some rich fuck’s sheltered shit-for-brains kid until they trust us enough to tell us where they keep the family heirlooms-”

“Actually, that’s exactly what we’re here to do, Levi, need I remind you-”

Eren blinked away sleepiness, grunting as he straightened from where he’d been sleeping with his cheek pressed against a hatbox. His neck cracked. He groaned.

The voices outside silenced.

“Levi, don’t-”

The door to the coach flew open. Eren squinted at a sudden onslaught of flickering yellow light.

“What,” a low, tense voice asked, “is that?”

“Levi, I can-”

“Erwin, what the _fuck_ is that?”

Eren started to make out the silhouette of the man in the door- short, with broad-shoulders.

Thick through the chest and arms, but deceptively slim through the waist, and with a small, neat face.

Big eyes, the kind that could be soulful if they weren’t staring at him like he was something he’d found crusted onto the sole of his shoe after a round of the stables.

Everything came back in a rush.

“Oh,” Eren said quietly.

Erwin shouldered Levi- decidedly not a woman, both to Eren’s relief and trepidation- out of the way and extended a genial hand towards him.

“Young master Jaeger, would you like to join us?” he invited warmly.

Eren took his hand more out of necessity than anything- he was still groggy, and navigating the trunk-filled space of the coach was difficult enough in the gloom.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Levi groaned, eyes fixed on him and eyebrows furrowed. It was the most expressive he’d ever seen him. “Erwin, are you completely insane? We just got out of Nile’s area and now you want to attract attention to us again by taking up _kidnapping?”_

“I didn’t kidnap him,” Erwin said calmly, helping him out of the coach. “He wanted to come. Didn’t you, Eren?”

“Mm,” Eren confirmed, rubbing at his eyes and trying to wake up faster. The lantern in Levi’s hand seemed very bright against the darkness that surrounded them. He wondered what time it was.

“Yeah, and I’m sure that’s going to stand up real fucking well when his parents are the ones saying he was kidnapped,” Levi snapped, “How the hell do you expect to get through checkpoints with _that_ in tow?”

Eren frowned at him. “God, you’re loud,” he mumbled, squinting past the glare of the lantern.

All at once, he saw Levi’s face as the face of the duchess and was overwhelmed. The connection sparked something in his brain that had a death wish- he couldn’t stop himself from laughing.

It boiled out of him like a tide- rising, rhythmic, wave after wave of helpless chuckling.

“Hah?” Levi grumbled low in his throat, quirking an eyebrow at him. “The hell have you got to laugh about, kid?”

There were tears gathering in his eyes. “ _You,_ ” he wheezed, “you make such a _terrible_ woman and I just pictured what would have happened if I had to marry you, oh god-”

Beside him, Erwin coughed quietly. Eren had entirely too much experience disguising his laughter to mistake Erwin’s cough for anything else.

Levi was scowling in that very particular way only very self-controlled men with very little patience for foolishness could- it wasn’t so much a visible expression as it was a certain tightness of the jaw, a narrowness of the lips.

“Why did you bring him with us, Erwin?” It came out a low, carrying growl that resonated ominously in Eren’s bones.

The fine hairs on his arms and the back of his neck rippled.

A cold shiver crawled over his scalp.

His breath hitched ever-so-slightly in his chest.

Eren stopped laughing immediately.

This would have been an opportune moment for Eren to think,

_‘This can’t be happening,’_

but instead, he thought,

_‘Oh no, not him,’_

with a feeling of intense exasperation, precisely because it _was_ happening and he knew it.

Were she ever to discover it, the certain brand of people Carla Jaeger’s son tended to take an interest in was one that would have seen her dead with grief before she’d finished the falling part of falling into a swoon, but it was something that had ceased to shame Eren once he’d finally accepted that there was simply nothing to be done about it.

He’d long since stopped lying to himself.

It just wasn’t practical.

So it wasn’t the feeling itself that bothered him, but rather, the irritating realization that he not only had once _again_ put himself in the dangerous position of having to resist the temptation to flirt with someone who wanted less than nothing to do with him, but that he also found himself disappointingly bereft of the ability to needle the man in question about his complete unattractiveness as a woman.

He made, most decidedly, a much more comely man than he did a woman, but his face was still not one that demanded to be painted or drawn or sung of.

He did not have Erwin’s high cheekbones, nor his long, straight nose, nor his heavy, masculine brow, which was often the subject of much envious discussion, particularly amongst older women and envious men bearing softer features.

He did not have Eren’s bright eyes, nor his rich, dark skin, nor his wide, expressive mouth, which was often described as being found to curl up at the corners in a manner that made it seems as though he was plotting some great mischief, even when he was not smiling at all.

He did not have Eren’s father’s stern, authoritative carriage, nor Eren’s mother’s finely aged beauty, nor even their groundskeeper’s ruggedly weathered homeliness.

There was just _something_ about him, and it had absolutely nothing to with how appealing Eren found his features currently, because it had been there in equal measure when he had been the duchess, and it had absolutely everything and nothing to with his deep-set eyes and heavy eyelids, because he had seen it best when they’d been looking at instead of through him, as they so often did.

There was something more dangerous than beauty or gentlemanly charisma lurking there- something he couldn’t quite put a name to. It underwrote Levi’s growl like a snatch of melody he found his ears straining to catch more of, and that was all it took, because suddenly it was flashing tauntingly at him from between Levi’s teeth when he spoke and glittering teasingly at him in the flicker of lantern light reflecting in Levi’s pupils.

 _‘Not him,’_ Eren thought again, frustrated. He’d been looking forward to mercilessly mocking him. This meant he couldn’t- that first thrill of intrigue meant that he suddenly feared being hated. It meant that no matter how he told himself that it didn’t matter and that he would never act on it, he would still be a slave to his desire to be wanted as badly as he felt himself wanting, and he’d be helpless to make a villain of himself for it. This was ruining his fun before it had even started.

This was ruining everything.

Including the present moment.

“Oi,” Levi murmured, leaning towards Erwin, his eyes never leaving Eren’s face. “Did you leave him in there with a bottle of wine?” His expression was snide, lip turned in a small sneer and nose wrinkled unbecomingly at the bridge. He looked patently ugly for it.

It made Eren furious because he _knew_ , his thinking mind knew and he wanted so badly for it to matter, but his feeling mind, the part that so often overpowered his thinking mind, the part that drove him to fight and fuck despite being old enough to know better- despite knowing better, despite knowing before and even as he did it that he should not and would almost certainly wish he hadn’t- saw the ugly tilt of his lips and the unfeeling judgement in his eyes and was an absolute fool for them.

He wanted to launch himself at him, to topple the both of them over and scuffle like animals or children in the dirt of the road while the lantern oil set the coach blazing, and he could not, because the thought gratified his angry heart but set the pit of his stomach falling open, left him feeling ill and weak like the sickness of blooming infatuation always did.

He wanted to do a great many unseemly things, and all of them could make this foul-mouthed, boorish little imp of a man lean away from him, could mean the difference between disinterest and distaste, so he could do absolutely nothing but stand stiffly with his fists balled at his sides and the heat rising in his face as he fought to internalize his frustration and served to frustrate himself more for his inability to help how strangely he was acting.

The midnight breeze hit his blazing cheeks like a slap of cold water when Levi’s unwavering look of bemused derision suddenly grew unfocused.

Eren watched the stiffness shoot up through his spine and shoulders. Levi’s hand flew up, palm forward, in a motion that seemed almost convulsive in its fluidity.

“I hear horses,” he said, interrupting a slow tide of meaningless noise Eren only then realized had been Erwin’s voice.

In his silent fit of futile rage, he’d completely forgotten his existence.

Now, his presence seemed uncomfortably immediate. Eren could feel his eyes on him. He suspected they’d been on him for some time without him noticing.

“Another coach?” Erwin murmured.

Levi shook his head once, muscles bundling under the skin of his jaw as he flattened his lips into a line. “Get him out of sight,” he hissed through his teeth.

Eren only had time enough to forgo asking questions in favour of observing the peculiar way Levi began to scuff his tracks from the dirt in a few precise, tense motions of his boot before he was bundled back into the coach.

Erwin smiled at him in a way he was beginning to suspect was just a very skillful fakery. “Stay quiet. Try not to move around too much. Levi and I will handle this,” he said soothingly before swinging the coach door almost shut.

He intended to obey, at first.

But then he could hear the horses, too, and he could not mistake Erwin’s urgent whisper of,

“One of the queen’s night patrols?”

If they found him, he’d be escorted home and forced to play the part of a rescued victim, grateful to the crown for its vigilance.

There would be others, not duchesses, perhaps, but others he could not scare off or otherwise dissuade without alerting his parents to his wild nature.

There would always be others.

Eren was never the most intelligent of those within his circle of acquaintance. He would never be the renowned for his foresight, patience, or cleverness.

But he was, at times, cunning in the same way a wild animal was, and he never wasted time considering other options once one had presented itself to him.

When his eyes recognized the length of black curling out from under the edge of a box resting on the seat opposite him as belonging to one of Levi’s wigs, he made up his mind and moved with a speed and serene efficiency only near-sublime single-mindedness and an utter lack of consideration given to the prospect of failure had ever, could ever, and would ever, afford a person like him.

In the thin yellow ribbon of light eking into the coach from between the slightly ajar door and its frame, he propped a stray hand mirror against the edge of a box and carefully arranged the heavy curls around his face. There was still a stray pin tucked into netting of the wig. He jabbed and twisted it ruthlessly into his own to stop the weight of the hair from pulling it backwards and betraying him.

He pulled a shawl over his shoulders and idly searched the smaller boxes until he found what he was looking for. He frowned at the heavy case of powder and put it down again, thinking again of Levi’s ashen pallor.

He could hear the queen’s officers’ voices rising menacingly outside even as he carefully dabbed rouge onto his lips and cheeks with a finger.

Erwin’s voice was a steady pulse.

“I assure you, we have good reason to be lingering here, if you’d only allow us a moment to explain-”

Levi’s was not.

“-didn’t know being an agent of the queen gives you the right to harass innocent travellers for no reason or I might’ve gotten into the fucking business myself-”

 _‘I look like mom,’_ Eren thought as he turned his face slowly in the light to examine his handiwork. He found the thought distantly amusing.

He turned the mirror down, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply.

He felt for the demure posture he’d seen so many times and mockingly emulated so many more.

With his shoulders sloped forwards and his chin tucked downwards, he reached out a hand and pulled the curtains on the coach door window aside in a motion he knew looked girlish for its unhurried primness.

The light was blinding to have in both eyes at once. He closed his eyes and fought the wince that would bring his inquisitively raised eyebrows glowering down.

There were three men on horses. All of them were wearing the green of the queen’s employ.

They fell silent when he peered up at them.

He didn’t dare look at Erwin or Levi, but he could see in the peripheries of his vision that they’d gone still.

He felt high in his throat for the voice he’d so often used in jest and general mischief. Too many suitors found him strangely well-suited to imitate what he had spent so long making light of.

“Oh dear,” he said from somewhere just behind his palate, “is my carriage obstructing the roadway?” He saw Levi jerk out of the corner of his eye- felt the weight of his stare and could not help but feel smug under it. “You have my deepest apologies, officers,” he breathed, pushing his lips down into an affected moue as he swept a stray curl out of his face. “I did tell my boy-” he could not resist the explosive emphasis of the word, nor the sidelong glance he shot Levi, who looked torn between bemusement and thoughts of murder “-to pull us farther over, but he’s afraid to unseat me, the dear thing.”

The eldest of the queen’s men, a grim-looking man of fifty-something, visibly softened when he blinked slowly up at him. Eren watched him slide from his horse with very genuine interest. He knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he was in a very dangerous position, but he also knew that it would only hit him later, when the danger had passed.

“My good lady,” the officer said cordially, bowing too shallowly to be polite, but more deeply than the stiffness of his back allowed comfortably, if his thinly-disguised wince was any measure to be trusted. “Why have you stopped your coach here, and at this hour?” His tone was almost chiding. Fatherly. Eren found it a little endearing. “This is not a safe place for a lady to take her rest.”

The words came to his lips as naturally as if he’d heard them spoken only minutes before, and was simply repeating them. They had the enduring quality of absolute absurdity.

“The road is rough here,” he complained. He could almost hear her voice. “I cannot take my sleep while my carriage is in motion, and this besides, I’m sure the gentlemen would like nothing more than a good fight with highwaymen.”

The look the comment earned him was precisely what he expected- faint suspicion giving way to complete exasperation.

The old officer did not have the time to even begin to speak before one of his still-mounted companions interjected.

“Which of these men is your husband? Neither of them bear rings, but it would be unseemly for a woman to travel accompanied by two men not of her family. What is your relation to them?”

Eren smiled genially at the dark shape and thought very cheerfully about his frequent desire to break the noses of people who were so much cleverer than he was.

Mercifully, he did not have to be clever, because someone had already been clever while he’d been looking, and such things were usually the only reason anyone ever mistook Eren for terribly clever.

“This is my dear brother through marriage,” he said softly, extending a hand through the window to Erwin, who took it and squeezed encouragingly before letting it idle in his palm. “He is my sister’s husband. I am not unescorted by family.”

“If he is your sister’s husband, why does he not bear a ring?”

There was a split-second where he didn’t know what to do, and in the moment following, he had a rare stroke of diabolic genius.

“My _late_ sister’s husband,” he said softly, and began to cry, much to everyone’s discomfort.

He withdrew his hand and used it to shield his face while he smoothed away his tears and buried his mouth in the fabric of his shawl.

Levi and the officers watched him with every appearance of deep awkwardness.

Erwin, however, looked thoughtful.

“I’m sorry, this is most unbecoming, but I’ve been resting so terribly since her passing,” he started, but Erwin took his hand again, squeezing it tight enough to break his words off in a pained gasp.

“My dear sister is tired,” he told the officers seriously, looking to each of them in turn. “I must ask for your indulgence in our time of loss. I promise you, we’ll be on our way shortly. I’m sorry that we’ve taken up so much of your valuable time.”

Eren murmured his goodbyes, hastily drawing his hand back into the coach and massaging it gingerly. He only half-listened to the queen’s men as they gave their condolences and said their farewells. He was more aware of their horses’ hooves beginning to patter on the packed dirt of the road than he was of the loss of their voices.

The silence lingered long after the sound of their horses had receded into the night.

Levi was the first one to break it.

“What the fuck,” he said in a voice that sounded like he couldn’t decide whether he should laugh or fear for his sanity, “was that?”

The way he was looking at him made Eren want to preen under the attention, and the impulse made him angry.

In a fit of sullen spitefulness, Eren batted his eyelashes at him, smiled and said, in his sweetest and most girlish voice,

“The results of better breeding than yours, my duchess.”

Levi looked begrudgingly impressed.

Levi also looked like he was seriously contemplating doing something foul like whipping Eren into a sobbing mess with his belt for his insolence.

The effect on Eren was almost certainly not what he’d intended it to be.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren's a shit, the narrative.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this so long and sorry it isn't longer. Been doing stuff.
> 
> Also, let it be known that I have done and intend to do exactly zero research for this piece, so at no point should you expect anything beyond the vaguest semblance of historical accuracy.

With Eren as he was, face a dark, satiny heart amidst the fall of his wig, rouged lips a bitten red, bright eyes a fey green under the dark fall of his eyelashes, their passage through the checkpoint went more smoothly than Levi could remember any such passage going before.

Eren flirted and flattered and giggled with an accuracy of inflection Levi found suspicious. He was too good at it. His voice was not so much higher than Levi’s own- a lyrical tenor to Levi’s lazy baritone- but he slipped into a sultry contralto with an ease that could only be the result of practice.

But it didn’t matter.

He’d admit it readily.

Eren made an infinitely better woman than he did. The fact did not bother him.

The way Eren insisted on needling him about it did.

“I wouldn’t want to displace you as the duchess,” he said with a mock frown, barely even bothering to feign sincerity. “Even if I am younger than you and make a much more convincing and attractive woman than you ever will, it doesn’t seem fair for me to steal your spotlight.”

Levi could almost feel his glances burning into the side of his face as he sorted through his luggage for things that would both suit and fit Eren’s rendition of the esteemed Duchess Arbinger.

He did not dignify Eren’s words with a response.

“Even _if_ I found us our next mark _while_ we were going through a checkpoint _you_ were convinced we’d have to bribe our way through,” Eren enunciated crisply.

Levi knew he wanted something. A rise, maybe, or an admission of Levi having lost to Eren’s superior wiles.

He wasn’t sure. He genuinely was not certain what to make of the way Eren looked at him.

Hostile but sultry, or seductive yet hateful, maybe. He knew the separate pieces of Eren’s expression well enough, but the whole of it was like a puzzling patchwork of strong feelings.

He’d decided it didn’t matter, and that was the attitude with which he was approaching the whole situation.

“It’s rude to leave a question unanswered, Levi,” Eren told him quietly from somewhere across the room.

Levi quirked an eyebrow and clicked his tongue against his teeth before throwing Eren a look over his shoulder. “You didn’t ask me a question,” he pointed out.

Eren made a disgruntled sound. “God, were you born in a-” Levi could hear him shifting pensively before he spoke again. “Were you born in a house with a red door?”

Levi stopped examining the minute stains littering the bodice of the dress he was holding up and turned to give Eren a puzzled look.

“A brothel, Levi,” Erwin said from the doorway, “a bawdy house.”

“Ah,” Levi acknowledged, turning back to the stains on the dress. “Maybe.”

Behind him, Eren made a strangled noise. He sighed through his nose. “What now?”

“Did you just admit to being the illegitimate child of a lady of the evening?”

He furrowed his eyebrows and glanced over his shoulder again, examining Eren’s strange look with a feeling of rising annoyance. “If that’s a politer word for a whore,” he shot back, “and you’re asking me if I’m a son of a whore, then no.” He frowned. “It’s like we’re not even speaking the same language.”

Eren had rolled onto his back on the bed and was looking at him with an expression no less identifiable as sudden amazement for being upside-down. “This is why you weren’t allowed to talk,” he murmured, blinking his big, bright eyes in Levi’s direction. “It’s not just because your voice is too deep- you have no class.”

The allegation speared his pride right where it mattered. “I do have class, you uppity little whelp,” he snapped.

Eren laughed at him. “Like I said: better breeding,” he teased with a sly look, rolling back onto his chest and resting his chin in his hands.

“I’ll _breed_ you,” he snarled automatically without thinking, and then paused as Erwin choked on whatever it was he was drinking over there in the doorway and Eren’s face went that special variety of carefully blank people’s faces always did when he inadvertently said something exceptionally shocking. “What?” he demanded. “What is it?”

Eren’s lips trembled with what looked a little too much like the effort of not laughing. “Nothing,” he said softly, and then snorted unbecomingly before burying his face in his arms.

When he flicked his gaze towards Erwin, he found him similarly discomposed. “What is he laughing at?” he growled.

Erwin opened his mouth with a fond but slightly pained look, but he’d gotten no further than,

“Levi, when a man says he intends to ‘breed’ another man, that’s-”

before Eren interrupted him with a croak.

“Don’t tell him,” he wheezed, face red and eyes teary. “It’s much funnier this way.”

Levi scowled at him.

“I can already tell,” he muttered, “that you’re going to be a joy to have around.”

Eren just smiled sweetly at him.

***

“Remind me again,” he hissed, “why you being the duchess means I still need to wear a dress?”

Eren bumped shoulders with him, shooting him a sly smile. “You’re my handmaiden.”

“What in the hell does that even mean? I keep asking and you still haven’t answered me,” Levi snapped, trying to move away and only succeeding in pressing himself further into the carriage wall. There was an abundance of room to Eren’s left, yet he insisted on sitting firmly in Levi’s space. He suspected it was meant to annoy him.

It was working.

“It means no one will think anything of it if I ask you to carry a message to my dear brother-in-law,” he answered, “that you’ll be expected to stay close by me and attend my needs, and that you’ll be allowed into my chamber without incurring suspicion.”

Something about how Eren said it, though his tone was casual, set Levi’s instincts on edge.

“ ‘Attend your needs’, huh?” he grumbled. “Don’t get any ideas, whelp. I can put bruises on you in places they won’t see, if I have to.”

Eren didn’t look especially perturbed.

Levi glowered. “I don’t make threats lightly,” he warned.

“I believe you,” Eren murmured, but the bright mischief in his sidelong glance didn’t give Levi any faith that he’d taken the threat to heart.

***

He knew the boy was up to something the moment he placed his hands on the estate mistress’ cheeks.

“My good lady Kirschtein,” Eren greeted warmly, and promptly kissed her soundly on the mouth.

Levi stiffened. Beside him, Erwin made startled sound that tapered off into a contemplative hum.

The poor lady looked absolutely distracted. “O-oh,” she said, smiling weakly as Eren took her hands with an innocent smile. “Is- is this a common custom where you hail from, my duchess? I hadn’t-”

“Oh dear,” Eren gasped, a hand flying up to his mouth, “oh no. I’d forgotten we’d come so far south,” he breathed, tears gathering in his eyes. “Please forgive me, I’ve been terribly rude.”

“No, no,” Mistress Kirschtein rushed to assure him, leaning in hesitantly before pecking him on the mouth in return. “It’s been so long since we’ve had a guest from the north,” she soothed, taking his hand between her own. “I’d almost forgotten, please forgive me for my rudeness.”

“That’s not true, is it? Is he fucking with them already?” Levi hissed, but Erwin just nudged him with his elbow in a reminder to be silent.

“-is away on business, but the household affairs are managed well enough by myself and my son, Jean,” Mistress Kirschtein was saying as a fresh-looking young man in his early twenties stepped up with a charming smile and leaned in the same way his mother had.

Eren reared back, expression devilish for only a fraction of a second before he shot the younger Kirschtein a bewildered, somewhat incredulous look.

“Do you think I’m so improprietous as to kiss a man who is not my brother or husband on the mouth?” he asked sharply, and the young man faltered, eyes darting towards his mother. Eren laughed softly. “Since it has been so long since you’ve entertained a northerner, I’ll condescend to instruct you,” he said crisply, clearly enjoying the flush of embarrassing that rose on the younger Kirschtein’s cheeks as he kissed him once on each cheek and then stepped away.

“He must be fucking with them,” Levi muttered again, and was elbowed again.

He didn’t like it when Eren’s bright eyes fell on him, devilish once more.

“Griselda, Sir Ian, come greet our lovely hostess.”

He didn’t like it at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (For those of you not in the know, "I'll breed you" is a crude way of saying "I'll fuck you bareback" in the gay community, which in no way is appropriate to the setting or ostensible dialect barrier. I don't care. It's funnier this way.)


End file.
